Wots Wrong??

[MDA]

Wots Going on with my Computer??

Please help, a couple of days ago my system started to crash, one of two things were happening:

1- There was a clicking sound (like the computer was resetting) and then the screen would crack up with blocks of pixels appearing across the screen in different places, the rest of the screen looked out of focus and like it was vibrating. there was no mouse movement so i had to reset, mostely restarted no problem!

2- the second type of crash i was getting involved the same clicking noise as above but then the power just died completely!!
No reboot, just died! It then wouldnt switch on unless i let it be for a few minutes an unplug and replug the power cord.

Both these things were very annoying, but then last night the second type of crash happened and when i finally got it to reboot, one of my drive partitions had become corrupted, normal file names had become some kind of alien scripture id never seen before! and i couldnt access the drive at all!

Thinking it was power supply problem ive just bought a new 'micron 400w power' supply and after I reformating my hdd and reinstalling 'xp pro' its happened again just a minute ago!

Ive now under clocked evrything but another thing thats happened is that my 1.44 floppy drive has stopped working, when i try to boot from it i get 'i/o error'

I have a feeling it might be my mother board, but i cant afford a new one at the moment, and its wierd that when it works it works just fine!!

Any ideas on this problem would be appreciated

MDA

 

[pcgirl]

My guess would be either the motherboard or the HD is bad. If you have access to a HD that you know is good, put that in there and see if you still have problems.

 

[David]

Its the hard disk I think. Try running scandisk on it. If it sees loads of bad sectors, back up your important stuff ASAP. If the drive IS bad, see if you can RMA it.

 

[MDA]

Ive since reformated the hard drive and using at the moment, its quite new only 2 months old, but would this hdd problem really cause those types of crashes??

thanks for the replies

i had changed some bios settings such as :

Enhanced chip performance : enabled
force 4 way interleave: enabled
agp apature size : 128m

i dont suppose these could cause such an error?

 

[Hotsauce]

Hi MDA,

I'm runnig an kt7a-r, and every once in a while I'll get a problem somewhat like your. I usually leave my pc running 24-7, but will reboot at least once a day.

Occasionally when I reboot the monitor will look like someone is shaking the sh*t out of it. The screen gets all kinds of blurry, and the text is warped in a bad way.

I've downloaded, but not applied the latest drive bios pat. from abit. You can get it here if you don't already have it.

I'll follow your thread closely, we may have similar problems.

 

[LiGhTBoY]

Thinking it was power supply problem ive just bought a new 'micron 400w power' supply

Nothing to do with the thread but take a look at your signature. it says MACRON instead of Micron.

 

[MDA]

My mistake its 'Macron' not 'Micron'

as mentioned here: www.amdworld.co.uk/hkk.htm

MDA

 

[Gnufsh]

Whould the HD corrupt the display like that? I agree with pcgirl--find a good HD if you can and test it with that. That will tell you what if the HD is actually the problem or not.

-Dan

 

[MDA]

As i mentioned before, im using the same drive now, just reformated and reinstalled xp, seems to be working fine at the moment. i thought the curruption could have been caused by the sudden loss of power to the drive, but i dont know, as for the visual probs, could a hdd really affect that?

MDA

 

[David]

If the HD is bad you can reformat it as many times as you like and it will still play up. You need to try another HD to be able to say that your current HD is OK.

 

[PsycoPhreak]

I doubt the HD will cause video corruption as you have described, the partition info was probably scrambled by the sudden loss of power....( to much of a coincidence...lost power and partition went bad...) I'd look into a few things:

1. considering the video glitches across the screen you mentioned....VIRUS comes to mind....do a scan of ALL files on the drives....even if you format...a virus can still remain...

2. seeing the power supply was changed and your still seeing problems, might look into a possible short on the mobo..( maybe even an IDE cable has a small spot where the isulation is cut/open and touching somewhere in the case and grounding out, happened to me....sys kept powering off...took forever to find..) check all cables, plugs, connections....clean as needed...sometimes a bad connection will result in weird occurences like you are seeing...

3. possible bad motherboard or something plugged into the motherboard via the slots or by cable is going bad...

Do a thorough check of your system....take everything out and make sure the cables are all ok, that all the plugs are clean of corrosion and dust....ahh yes..dust, that can screw a system to.

Again...do a thorough check of all components/cables....and clean clean clean......

 

[David]

Try getting hold of a linux boot disk. Boot off of the disk and do:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
That will write zeroes accross the entire disk and destroy everything.

 

[MDA]

Cheers for the ideas 'Psycophreak' some of them i have already covered.

I checked for viruses through the whole system-none found!

I also reassembled the machine clearing all dust, and there was a lot (need to make/get some filters!).

Scince the reformat and new power supply, all seems well and the machine hasn't crashed once scince yesterday(been on for 15 hours)!!

Still having probs with the floppy drive still reports i/o errors, any ideas? (i'll try and get hold of another tommorow)

Thanks for the replies.

MDA